School’s in session and more kids are learning, growing, and playing fueled by good-tasting whole grains!

Lately, there have been big wins in the movement to improve school lunches, and Community Grains is proud to be doing their part.

Oakland Unified School District has decided to go all in with Community Grains’ California-grown, 100% whole grain pastas,now on cafeteria lunch menus in 85 Oakland public schools!

And in yet another fantastic move, OUSD is set to adopt a Good Food Purchasing Policy — a purchasing standard that demonstrates its commitment to better sourcing, sustainability, fair labor, and quality whole foods.

Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School

It seems like common sense that exercise helps every body function, including cognitive brain function. Scientists may agree with common sense, but they tend to like evidence.

That means lots of experiments to test and verify their assumptions. When it comes to physical activity and academic performance, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that maybe we should be spending more school time working the body instead of constantly testing the brain to see how well it withstands boredom.

Evidence suggests that increasing physical activity and physical fitness may improve academic performance. Additionally, Available evidence suggests that mathematics and reading are the academic topics that are most influenced by physical activity.

Basic cognitive functions related to attention and memory facilitate learning, and these functions are enhanced by physical activity and higher aerobic fitness.

Single sessions of and long-term participation in physical activity improve cognitive performance and brain health. Children who participate in vigorous- or moderate-intensity physical activity benefit the most.

Have an adult on the premises (with an EpiPen). But otherwise, let kids figure out their own fun. Leonore Skenazy, WSJ

19-Year-Olds As Sedentary As 60-Year-Olds, Study Suggests

Teen Years Represent Highest Risk For Inactivity

Physical activity among children and teens is lower than previously thought, and, in another surprise finding, young adults after the age of 20 show the only increases in activity over the lifespan, suggests a study conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. And, the study found, starting at age 35, activity levels declined through midlife and older adulthood.

The study also identified different times throughout the day when activity was highest and lowest, across age groups and between males and females. These patterns, the researchers say, could inform programs aimed at increasing physical activity by targeting not only age groups but times with the least activity, such as during the morning for children and adolescents.

The findings, which were published online June 1 in the journal, Preventive Medicine, come amid heightened concern that exercise deficits are contributing to the growing obesity epidemic, particularly among children and teens.

“Activity levels at the end of adolescence were alarmingly low, and by age 19, they were comparable to 60-year-olds,” says the study’s senior author, Vadim Zipunnikov, assistant professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Biostatistics. “For school-age children, the primary window for activity was the afternoon between two and six P.M. So the big question is how do we modify daily schedules, in schools for example, to be more conducive to increasing physical activity?”

For their study, the researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from the 2003-2004 and 2005-2006 survey cycles. The 12,529 participants wore tracking devices for seven straight days, removing them for only bathing and at bedtime. The devices measured how much time participants were sedentary or engaged in light or moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.

The researchers broke down findings into five age groups: children (ages six to 11); adolescents (ages 12 to 19); young adults (ages 20 to 29); adults at midlife (ages 31 to 59); and older adults (age 60 through age 84). Forty-nine percent were male, the rest female.

Activity among 20-somethings, the only age group that saw an increase in activity levels, was spread out throughout the day, with an increase in physical activity in the early morning, compared to younger adolescents. The increase may be related to starting full-time work and other life transitions.

For all age groups, males generally had higher activity levels than females, particularly high-intensity activity, but after midlife, these levels dropped off sharply compared to females. Among adults 60 years and older, males were more sedentary and had lower light-intensity activity levels than females.

The study confirmed that recommended guidelines were not being met. For instance, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity a day for children ages five to 17 years. The study found that more than 25 percent of boys and 50 percent of girls ages six to 11 and more than 50 percent of male and 75 percent of female adolescents ages 12 to 19 had not met the WHO recommendation.

While WHO formulates its recommendations in terms of moderate-to-vigorous activity, the researchers say there is a growing consensus for the benefits of reducing sedentary behavior and increasing even low-intensity levels of physical activity.

“The goal of campaigns aimed at increasing physical activity has focused on increasing higher-intensity exercise,” says Zipunnikov. “Our study suggests that these efforts should consider time of day and also focus on increasing lower-intensity physical activity and reducing inactivity.”

“Re-evaluating the effect of age on physical activity over the lifespan” was written by Vijay R. Varma, Debangan Dey, Andrew Leroux, Junrui Di, Jacek Urbanek, Luo Xiao and Vadim Zipunnikov.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants 5R01HL123407-02, 5R01AG049872-02, 5R01AG050507-02). Vijay R. Varma was supported by the Intramural Research Program, the National Institute of Aging.

Vaccination Stats

Childhood vaccination programs now includes forty-eight doses of vaccines for fourteen diseases

— all administered between birth and age six

— compared to three vaccinations for seven diseases in the 1970s.

Vaccinated children were more than three times as likely to have allergies, six times as likely to have pneumonia, about three times as likely to have NDD, and almost twice as likely to have any chronic illness.

Preterm birth combined with vaccination was associated with nearly seven-fold increased odds of neurological development disorders.

The first study, comparing unvaccinated and vaccinated children, looked at the link between preterm (i.e., premature) infants, vaccination, and the development of neurological development disorders (NDD) such as autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and learning disabilities. Preterm babies are already at increased risk for NDD, but the study found that vaccinating preterm babies—which is standard medical practice—significantly increases that risk. Preterm birth combined with vaccination was associated with nearly seven-fold increased odds of NDD.Two recent studies underscore concerns that science has been abandoned in order to promote Big Pharma’s pro-vaccine agenda. Action Alert!

That’s not all. The second study, which surveyed more than 400 homeschooling mothers with 666 children (39% of whom were unvaccinated), found even more causes for concern. It found that vaccinated kids were, on the whole, sicker than unvaccinated kids. Vaccinated children were more than three times as likely to have allergies, six times as likely to have pneumonia, about three times as likely to have NDD, and almost twice as likely to have any chronic illness.

Additionally, the study also found that vaccinated kids were far more likely to use medications and other health services. They were more likely to have been prescribed antibiotics, allergy drugs, and fever medications; fitted with ventilation ear tubes; visited a doctor in the previous year for a health issue; and been hospitalized. Readers can consult the study for the specific numbers, but we can extrapolate that the healthcare costs of vaccinated children are at least twice that of unvaccinated children—not counting the real costs of caring for children with NDD and chronically sick children for a lifetime.

Like any study, these papers have limitations. The sample size (666 children) is relatively small, and self-reporting surveys can be unreliable. These findings indicate that larger studies comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated kids should be done.

As the authors note, this is not a radical view: the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine), which advises the federal government on health issues, has recommended further study of vaccines. The Academy specifically recommends focusing on the health outcomes of both vaccinated and unvaccinated children, the long-term cumulative effects of vaccines, the timing of vaccinations in relation to the child’s age, the total number of vaccines given, the total number of vaccines given at one time, and the effect of vaccine adjuvants.

It is shocking that such studies have never been done, considering that the childhood vaccination program now includes forty-eight doses of vaccines for fourteen diseases—all administered between birth and age six—compared to three vaccinations for seven diseases in the 1970s. If those who wish to force vaccinations on the US population are so confident that vaccines are safe, why not do the studies?

The likely answer: Big Pharma makes Big Money from pumping the most vulnerable among us full of vaccines.

Science is about examining all the currently available evidence dispassionately before reaching a conclusion—and that conclusion is always open to further evidence or analysis. Sadly, those claiming the mantle of “science” in the vaccine debate are actually rejecting science.

The question is not just whether we vaccinate, but rather how and when we do so. The biggest questions concern the use of adjuvants such as aluminum, which we are injecting right into our bodies where the liver cannot protect us; the use of preservatives; and the appropriateness of the schedule of shots. We need an honest, fact-based discussion of these topics.

Action Alert!Write to the FDA and tell them that they must study the long term effects of vaccination. Please send your message immediately!

Editor’s note (5/9/2017):Within hours of publishing this article, we learned of reports that the Journal of Translational Science has retracted these studies. We will keep you updated as we work to confirm these reports and discern the reason for the retraction. It wouldn’t surprise us if special interests are behind this, since industry has used its clout to exert pressure on scientific journals in the past.

Update (5/18/2017): We can now confirm that the studies have not been retracted, and are back online.

Probiotics Offer Powerful Protection For Infants Against Sepsis

What is sepsis? Sepsis is the result of a massive immune response to bacterial infection that gets into the blood. A bacterial infection in the blood, is called septicemia. You’ll often hear both terms used together. It often leads to organ failure or injury. This is no joke. It’s a deadly serious matter.An estimated 1 million Americans develop sepsis each year and up to 50 percent die from the systemic infection.

The bacterial strain selected was Lactobacillus plantarum ATCC-202195 — a kind of lactic acid bacteria found in fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut and kimchi. To that, they added the prebiotic fructooligosaccharide “to promote growth and sustain colonization of the probiotic strain.”

According to NPR, the team was “shocked by how well the bacteria worked.” In infants given the synbiotic mix (probiotic plus prebiotic) for one week, the risk of sepsis and death dropped by 40 percent, from 9 to 5.4 percent.